Library of Congress opens its doors on Nov. 1, 1897

On this day in 1897, the Library of Congress building on First Street and Independence Avenue Northwest opened its doors to the public. Previously, the library had been housed in the Congressional Reading Room in the U.S. Capitol.

In 1871, after the library had outgrown its cramped quarters, Ainsworth Spofford (1825-1908), the librarian of Congress, proposed housing the library in a separate building. During Spofford’s tenure, the collection expanded from some 60,000 items to more than 1 million.

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According to library historian John Cole, Spofford “envisioned a circular, domed reading room at the library’s center, surrounded by ample space for the library’s various departments.” When completed, it was the largest and costliest library building in the world.

Congress approved the plan in 1886 after Spofford reminded the lawmakers that “there is almost no work, within the vast range of literature and science, which may not at some time prove useful to the legislature of a great nation.”

Spofford also pressed for passage of the copyright law of 1870, which further centralized the library’s collection. It stipulated, as Spofford put it, that two copies of every “book, pamphlet, map, print, photograph and piece of music registered for copyright be deposited in the library, a requirement that certainly would have met with [Thomas] Jefferson’s approval.”

In 1980, the building was named the Thomas Jefferson Building in honor of the nation’s third president. In 1814, Jefferson had sold his set of 6,487 books to the library to help rebuild the collection that was destroyed when the British burned the Capitol during the War of 1812.

The seed from which today’s library grew is housed in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Today, the library houses most of its collections in three buildings, all located on Capitol Hill.